Glass manufacturing can be described as a process in which raw materials are converted at high temperature to a homogenous melt that is then delivered through a suitable forming process which provides the product before finishing. One exemplary glass melting process comprises a melting furnace (premelt), a fining chamber (finer), and a glass delivery system comprised of at least a stir chamber. The glass melting furnace, or premelt, is the primary component in the overall glass manufacturing process. The premelt level (the level of melted and melting materials in the furnace) is generally manually controlled by changing screw-feed rate. The screw feeder is responsible for the amount of batch (raw materials) going into the premelt furnace. Many glass manufacturing processes are controlled manually because the process is slow enough to allow manual control, and because the process is too complex to be adequately modeled, thus precluding the application of general model-based control system designs. However, in order to provide glass products that comply with tighter customer specifications then it is desired to be able to control glass manufacturing processes to tighter tolerances and less subjective variability.
Therefore, what is needed is a method and system of controlling the premelt process that overcomes many of the challenges found in the art, some of which are described above.